Midleton man gets ready to welcome Cork customers to restaurant in Seville as new flights launched

IT wasn’t quite around the world in 80 days for Midleton man Martin Sheridan, but he is very well travelled, experiencing many adventures along the way.

Now, as flights between Cork and Seville have just launched, Martin and his wife, Alicia, are eagerly waiting to greet people from Leeside to their traditional Andalusian restaurant, ‘Restaurante la Cocina De Mi Suegra, (which translates as My Mother-in-law’s Kitchen).

Martin took the long route to finally finding his little piece of heaven.

“I left Ireland many years ago,” says the 49-year-old. “I did a year in college studying legal studies, but it wasn’t for me.”

He had a yen to see the world.

“I worked in an Irish bar in Germany in 1994,” says Martin.

Jobs weren’t plentiful in Ireland; so I was headed for Stuttgart where there were plenty of jobs.

He found his feet and his flair for languages.

“I found I had an ear for languages, and I was fluent in German within a year. In 1996, I came back briefly to work in a pub in Ballycotton that Stephen Pearse had opened. He was looking for staff. I had picked up guitar by then and I had often played in the German bar after the main band finished. So I was entertaining as well as working.”

The yearning to travel was still in him.

“If you ever start travelling, the wanderlust is still in you,” Martin explains.

“In May, 1996, I saw an ad in the Examiner looking for a bar manager in Europe. It was very vague.”

This took him to St Petersburg in Russia.

“Four Cork lads were looking for someone to look after and mind the pub they owned. I knew nothing about Russia, but I thought I’d have a go.”

He became fluent in Russian after eight months.

Playing his guitar, Martin also kept entertaining the punters.

“Entertaining seemed to be a theme running throughout my career,” he says.

He moved back home in 1997 when his brother, Patrick, tragically died.

“Inside my head, I thought of going back to college to get some qualifications. I went to Cathal Brugha Street College to study hospitality, working as a night manager in Dublin to put myself through college.”

After his three-year course, Martin worked for a catering company, Compass Catering.

I ended up as manager with them, doing a short stint as Munster assistant area manager. I still missed the cut and thrust and interaction between customers in a more public setting.

Martin, not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, met and married a Finnish lady, Essie.

“We met on a night out in Dublin,” recalls Martin, who embraced domesticity for a while.

“We settled in Clonea with our dogs. I went to work with another UK company, Autobar, that dealt in vending machines. I took over their operation in southern Ireland. I got a good offer in a managing director role, so I said yes as I had a mortgage to pay.”

Martin and Essie were content. Their eldest son, Cai, was born. Then 2008 arrived, bringing with it the financial crash.

“I was made redundant, and I was at a loss. What was I to do? I had a big mortgage, but no job offers.”

The couple decided to move to Finland. Martin went back to work in hospitality, something he loved and was good at.

“I worked in a German-themed restaurant,” he says.

“Again, I learned the Finnish language quickly. But we were living in a rented house on a barman’s wage. And we had a second son, Elias.”

When Martin got a phone call out of the blue, it looked like things were looking up.

“The director of Autobar had sold shares in the company and he asked me to come to the UK and work for him. I did the ground work to see if it was viable. The first two years in the UK I was back and forth to Finland every three weeks, spending one week in Finland. Essie was a stay-at-home mum.”

Being away from his family for that amount of time put a huge strain on the couple’s marriage and they eventually divorced.

“My friend saw that I was depressed, and he suggested getting away for a long weekend. He said pick where to go. There were cheap flights to Marbella, so we landed there. When I put a message and selfie on Facebook of me in the sun, I got a message from a girl I knew before asking me what I was doing there. She said, ‘Stay where you are. I’ll be with you in five minutes’.”

And so another odyssey began.

“I’m together with Alicia from that day to this day,” says Martin.

He was embraced by her family.

“I was invited to Alicia’s parents’ in Seville,” says Martin. “Her mother’s cooking was absolutely fabulous. She was a natural cook that had learned from her own mother-in-law.

“I told Alicia’s mother that if I ever opened a restaurant, I would call it my mother-in-law’s kitchen!”

Alicia and Martin got married in 2016 and decided to look at what they could do together

“Olivares, a small agricultural town, is the same distance between Cork and Midleton from Seville,” says Martin.

It has the same small town feel that Midleton has, and all the people here are half-related.

“It also enjoys 320 days of sunshine a year - sometimes up to 40C in summer. Christmas Day can be 22C.

“We found a fabulous old-worldly place with a great interior and a rustic feel.

“With lots of help from the in-laws, we sanded floors, set up tables and chairs inside and on the huge patio area.”

It was a labour of love.

“It was meant to be,” says Martin.

‘Restaurante La Cocina De Mi Suegra’ opened in 2018. Drawing inspiration from the diverse culinary heritage of his wife’s Alicia’s family, the restaurant serves up a delectable array of dishes that pay homage to the region’s rich history and unique culinary traditions.

“We had the idea to use traditional recipes from the area here,” says Martin.

What about the language?

Martin laughs.

“I had no Spanish and I found it much harder to learn the language than others.”

But he learned the lingo.

“I was thrown in the deep end at front of house,” says Martin.

“I thought I might be in the kitchen, and Alicia, a Spanish speaker, would be front of house, but the roles were reversed.”

There was a ‘strange Irish man with a guitar’ running ‘Restaurante la Cocina De Mi Suegra’ who assumed many roles.

“When our chef on the barbecue left, we couldn’t find anyone else, so I jumped in. People started asking, ‘Eho is the chef?’ We got great reviews on Tripadvisor and Google. Now I was on the meat station and front-of house! I was the host of the restaurant, the meat cooker and the musician! People kept asking, is Martin going to play? It’s been that way ever since.”

The business survived lockdown.

“The patio saved our bacon,” he says.

“We were at home during the pandemic going stir crazy, so I did gigs online every week, posting them on our Facebook page. We got great support.”

Martin pulls out his guitar every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the restaurant.

“We might get a reservation for six and be asked, ‘Will Martin pull out his guitar!’ And I play for 45 minutes or an hour.

“We have a different kind of restaurant here in Seville.”

Now he is looking forward to welcoming some Cork people to his restaurant.

It would be great if some people from Cork came out to Seville for the Andalusian experience - and it’d be great to see some of my own Cork natives.

And the new Ryanair flights, from Cork to Seville, will also make it easier for Martin to pop home more frequently too.

“La Cocina De Mi Suegra is not just a restaurant, it’s a celebration of Olivares; our family and Andalusia’s culinary heritage,” he says.

“I’m proud to have created with Alicia a unique experience for diners here in Seville and can’t wait to welcome Irish diners to experience the flavours and warmth of Andalusia at ‘La Cocina De Mi Suegra’.”